Monogram Mafia III

So yesterday and today I have been working on detail painting and washes in the cockpit. 

Cabin doors/hatches

Overhead & center consoles and Instrument Panel

cockpit rear bulkhead, ejection seats, and sidewalls

and finally, the Astronaut figures. The instructions would have you paint them in one of the earlier type suits used for Mercury and pre flight publicity photos. But the actual Gemini flights were flown in a white suits of a few types that eveolved during the course of the program

I am still working on them, but looking at the decal sheet, the decals have the nametapes for the Gemini 3 crew, Grissom and Young, so now I have to fine tune my (needs improvement) face painting skills for those two gentlemen...

seated in their seats...

then of course I had to do a test fit of all the major pieces...

and of course I really have to wonder if Jim Hesnon got  his inspiration from Gemini....

"....PIGS IN SPACE.....!!!"

Stay tuned for more...

Good pictures Josiah!  Like you, I spent most of my time walking around on the 'warbird' side of the hangar.  So many great planes, so little time to see them all.  Loved seeing the Vietnam War era planes; not to mention that massive Enola Gay!  Great museum, well worth the time to visit.  I only wish I could spell the name of the museum annex!!!

Josiah, thanks for those great photos! Perhaps Duke Maddog will take some inspiration from them as I just saw him win the Monogram 1/72 Shuttle kit at our IPMS fundraiser auction back in June. I remember going out to Edwards to see Columbia return from her 2nd mission there (a totally novel achievment at that time) and of other times seeing Enterprise on gound display there at the Open House air shows. As well as when I heard of the losses of Challenger and Columbia. Yesterday I tried a new route for my bike ride and this one took me by both the old Rockwell Seal Beach plant and McDonnel Douglas Huntington Beach plant (now both owned by Boeling) where many of the Apollo and later spacecraft were and are made. That is always inspiring to me to see where such greatness was made.

ajd, I know what you mean. That particular kit is a fun one. I can not remember how many of those that I have built over the years.

I am SO ready to get done with my two ongoing builds and start my P-39. It will be nice to take it easy with a sweet 'ol monogram kit.

Great pics Stik!  I am a huge advocate of the space program.  Have been since I was a kid.  Being raised in Florida and having grandparents living in Melbourne afforded me the luxury of visiting the Space Center FREQUENTLY!  Of course this was before they charged for everything at the museum.  Used to go there and just walk around the rocket garden and touch the rockets!   Lots of dreams there.  Anyway, it is inspiring to see the real deal up close.  I remember the Columbia incident too.  I was in college in my chem lab when another science prof ran in with a radio that was broadcasting what had just happened.  Very sad day.  

Thanks for the great pics!

Eagle90

Here's some other pictures of space stuff I took while I was there...Discovery is probably one of the biggest "attractions". I'm more into the airplanes and I've been there before but now that I'm older and can actually think, I stood there for awhile just looking at it... I still remember when the Columbia incident happened like it was yesterday (wasn't alive when the Challenger happened). Sobering and humbling stuff seeing something like that and realizing where it's been...had a similar experience with the Enola Gay. Anyways here's some pics hopefully you or someone else will find "inspiring" so to say.

Stik, here's a picture I took last week at the Air and Space Museum by Dulles Airport...hopefully this will help you some...I think it's a Gemini pod, I should've taken pictures of all the plaques, but I can't remember 100%.

EDIT: Just read your second post and those pictures are a lot better than mine. I think that is the one at the Air and Space in DC...but they are a lot better photos anyways...your build is looking good so far!!

Well today I finally had some time to get in some un interrupted work at the bench here. So I started with the very mundane. Filling the seams on the Astronaut figures. Squadron white putty is seen here doing that task. I will let it dry overnite and sand it up tomorrow

Now as I said previously the instruction sheet color call outs appear to based off of a NASA illustrution and not off any of the preserved actual Gemini Spacecraft. So I am using this walk around of the National Air & Space Museum as my primary reference source.

http://www.cybermodeler.com/space/gemini/gemini_walk1.shtml

Now based upon those photos, I am gonna go with Light Gull Gray on the interior base color with the ejections seats (YES, Gemini had actual ejection seats rather than an escape tower type system as on Mercury and Apollo) in Dark Gull Gray.

the rear bulkhead and sidewalls

inner faces of the crew hatches

center console, instrument panel, and overhead console

and finally, just in case, I also got the areas of the nose cone, inner capsule surfaces, etc, that just might be visible when the capsule is all put together and the hatches are opened. And with that work went the last of my Gunze Aqueous semi gloss Light Gull Gray, which is sadly no longer available at any shops here in the USA

Tomorrow I will do detail painting, washes, etc. and get the Instrument panel decals on hopefully.

MV, the photo of your Monte Carlo witht he box top has been added to the front page here. Very nicely done sir!

B-1, your making fast work of your second Eagle here as well! Wow! I wish that I still built at a more rapid pace.... 

PM, good progress on your project so far

Guys I have been so busy this week that I forgot to post my initial bit of work on my Gemini build here. So here is what I have done so far.

The color call outs seem to be based off of a NASA illustration and off of early/pre operational Gemini mock ups and equipment. So the first thing that I did was to go thru various image searches and find photos of actual mission equipment. After that I went thru the instruction sheet and annotated my own color call outs for use during construction. 

Then I began cutting parts off of the sprues and gluing them together. The plastic itself is a tad on the soft side and not brittle at all so far. Mold seam and attachment stub clean up was quite easy with my needle files.

center console with control stick and release handle installed

overheard center console with lever installed

rear bulkhead attached to heat shield

and I have the front instrument panel and cabin sidewalls removed from the sprues but will not glue them in place until after painting is done in the next few days

with the sidewalls placed on the rear bulkhead

and finally the two Astronaut figures. I will not add their clear face shields until after painting

I know that painting all this will take longer than building it did. Seeing how I am now on vacation for the next few weeks, I should have plenty of time to get this one knocked out. 

Update:

here's a couple shots of the painted body (still need to add a few coats of gloss)

Was having some "issues" with the dragster, so I decided to get on with the Expedition......

here's the interior floor still wet from the MM Fabric gray

here it's dry....

the tailgate has been hit with primer grey

the interior side panels with a coat of primer grey

I have my fuselage together and wings on.  The port fuselage half had a significant warp to it (probably about 30 degrees).  I tried hot water to straighten it to little effect, and decided to cement the halves together in sections.  This worked well for the most part, but the wing fillet has an arched gap, and the back of the fillet is also turned.  I took pictures, but they didn't turn out.  My solution is to fill the gap and try to file the rear of the wing fillet to shape.

Here is my progress so far with the 2nd build, I got the pre-shading and first coat of paint down. I am waiting for some A/G weapons to arrive in the mail for this kit. It should help give her the proper look 

Josiah, another option for you to be able to get "more Russian looking rocket pods" would be to get the front end pieces from the pods carried by UK Phantoms. You could drill out each "slice" they have for a rocket hole and put tubing in there, cut off to a suitable length. I do not know if the number of rockets per pod will match up,,,,,,but, you would get the correct look, anyway.

Rex

Though it's purely coincidental, I've figured about 80% of the spare parts I'm using are from Revell kits..

I'm taking your advice B1...here's the progress on the rocket pods so far...I fear my scratch building skills are not quite there enough to make some russian looking rocket pods, so I'm settling for more of the american kind, the one with flat sides on each end of the pod. Here's the progress on that so far.

With regards to the actual plane...it's progressing quickly....I don't have to worry about the top seam as that will all be covered up by another part. I'll be working on the bottom seam to get that fixed up though.

There's also gonna be some strip styrene and putty added to blend this in...I had this in the spare parts bin and did some chopping and sanding to get it down to fit the curvature as best I can.

And one more picture...I plan on putting this cruise missile-esque ordinance on a center pylon where the fuel tank would be. Here's how I'm thinking it'll turn out though I might nix the guidance add on since it just seems too big to me.

Yeah the 350 arrows would be the best choice. I remember seeing a pic of some mig-21's performing a rocket attack. Looked pretty menacing !

B1...rocket pods...thats a good idea...do you think the shorter, 350-arrows would be better for that?

You could use the arrows to make rocket pods

Hey Plasticjunkie, yes its the old monogram F-86. The pit and wheel wells look ok but things like the landing gear look like blobs  and everything is covered in a lot of flash. If the fit is ok I will do my best to make her look good

Steve

While waiting for paint and putty to cure for the 106 and alpha jet I'm doing for the braille scale build...I decided to start on my MiG-21...

So forgive the long post for such a small update, but here's what I'm planning on this MiG. I previously build one of these in a tropical-esque digital camo (not done waiting to make low vis decals) and I wanted to build a sister plane except in a naval theme. I'm not sure if I'm going to do digital camo or not...but it is gonna be a cool scheme no matter what it is. I also want to make this one mean looking MiG. I believe I can do this with some extra what-if ordinance and the paint scheme. SO...here's where I'm at so far...

Just the basic cockpit...unlike every other jet aircraft I've built from Revell, the cockpit in all honesty sucks...oh well, I'm going to stick a pilot in it and not get bogged down because it's going to be hanging from my ceiling with the wheels up. In addiction since this is a short (yes 5 months is short for me) time frame on this build, I'm gonna focus on the exterior of the plane and leave the cockpit be.

Wings and tail fin together...this kit gives you the option of a long and short tail version...I am unaware of what the differences are and which versions use which (not that it matters too much since I'm throwing reality out the window) but I chose the longer version. I did this because I feel it beefs up the MiG so to speak. Like I said before I want this to be one mean MiG. 

So, that's where I'm at right now, but here's some EXTRA stuff because I'm feeling adventurous in this post.

A couple days ago at work I had a lot of people needing arrows cut, so instead of throwing them in the trash, I took the cut pieces and brought them home in hopes of finding a use for them.

Well in case you can't see....there's three different sizes, both in thickness and in length. Here they are against the wing/hull of my "tropical" MiG for a size comparison...

That is the longest, and skinniest. IIRC it's a 500-arrow

That one is both medium length, medium thickness...400-arrow

And finally the shortest and thickest...350-arrow

Now obviously the 500-arrow is going to be to long for anything...but I figured the 400-arrow could be made into an anti-shipping or some other long missile, and the 350 arrows could be made into some sort of rocket/missile/guided bomb.

Here's some pictures next to the kit supplied atoll missiles, which I guess are cool, but they make this MiG look small and wimpy...

 Now, in conclusion, I don't want to make this MiG look overloaded, which is going to be hard, but I do want it to have some heftier armament by finally using my spare parts bin. Anyways, thanks for looking and all comments/ideas are welcome.

MV that car came out looking great...and Darrin your progress is looking great, I'm not so sure your signature holds true in this one I'm afraid I'd be way behind where you're at right now!

mississippivol

How far away did you have to be in order to get it all in the frame?

About 5 feet. It is a tick over 30" wingspan.

Here's some small progress with the -106

Got the front of the fuselages  puttied up and am trying PJ's method.

Darrin, it's coming along nicely! How far away did you have to be in order to get it all in the frame?

Everyone your works look awesome! Here's the BUFF ready for final seam work and primer. This thing is big......

Very very nice! Great job !

One down, one to go. Here it is in all it's "Limited Edition" glory...the Monogram 1/24 scale Cartoon Network Monte Carlo! Featuring Tom and Jerry on the hood, Dexter's laboratory on the port side, and Cow and Chicken to starboard, with a driving tip from Droppy on the stern:

One of 10,000 produced; glad I got it on clearance...bet it's still $5 somewhere.

In tandem with the Scooby Doo car:

The Scooby Doo car was fun when I built it in the 90's: I bought Tru Match paint in a can, and it came out like Silly String at first; thought it was ruined but the paint ended up being usable.

sidure

 I checked out the F-86 and was seriously dissapointed in it. Very clunky and lacking in any detail. I will do the best I can with it though

Steve

Well I guess I have started my builds tonight. Got some paint onto the F-8 to prep for constuction. While that dried I checked out the F-86 and was seriously dissapointed in it. Very clunky and lacking in any detail. I will do the best I can with it though

Steve

Great stik. I will start next week on the old Monogram 1/48 Fokker DVII that I got from Squadron many moons ago.